Sample Sizes: The Cheapest Customer You Will Ever Buy

A customer who has felt your serum on their own skin is a different prospect from one who has read about it. Samples are how that happens, and they are the least expensive thing you will ever order.

The sizes worth stocking

• 2ml to 5ml vials for a serum or oil. Enough for three or four uses, which is the point where somebody notices a difference.
• 10ml to 15ml for a cream or balm, in a mini jar. A cream sample smaller than that is a smear rather than a trial.
• 15ml to 30ml as a paid travel size, which is a different product with a different job.

Free sample or paid mini

They are not the same thing and mixing them wastes both. A free sample goes in the box with an order and costs you a customer acquisition you have already made. A paid mini sits on the shop as a low-risk first purchase and earns money while it converts.

Run both. The free one turns a single-product buyer into a range buyer, and the paid one turns a hesitant stranger into a customer.

Four ways to use them

• In every order, unannounced. An unexpected extra is the cheapest goodwill available.
• As a discovery set of three, sold at cost. Buyers of these convert to full size at a far better rate than a cold visitor.
• To retailers and stockists, who will not stock a range they have not touched.
• To anybody who asks a question you cannot answer in writing. A sample settles a texture argument in a way no description does.

What to watch

Small containers make packaging mistakes obvious. A pipette sized for 30ml is unusable in a 5ml vial, and a cap that works at 50g feels flimsy at 10g. Order the sample sizes at the same time as the full sizes and fill both, because a sample that leaks in a parcel undoes the goodwill it was bought for.

Start with 10 vials of your hero formula and put one in the next ten orders you ship.